Saturday, June 17, 2017

I coulda been an astronomer

A long time ago I used to belong to the Royal Astronomical Society (amateur astronomers) in Ottawa (Canada). That's me on the right with some of my friends. We were testing our sun filters and getting ready to see Venus when the sun went down.

In spite of this promising beginning, I decided to go into biology because it was harder and more interesting.

#1. For me, yes, but I'm no expert on the mental processes of fruit flies. I'm more interested in what you wanted to find out by asking.

#2. Yes. Roger Penrose wrote an interesting book about this in which he tried to derive a "No" answer mathematically, but it was ultimately unconvincing to me (quite possibly because there was much of it I didn't understand very well :-) ). Why should neurons be the only form of matter capable of sustaining consciousness?

I asked because there are many people who think humans acquired consciousness at some time in the past several hundred thousand years and other animals aren't conscious.

If you accept that fruit flies are conscious then we can start to explore when and how this presumed phenomenon arose. This will help me understand what you mean by "consciousness."

Are earthworms conscious? How about round worms? How about the earliest animals preserved in the Cambrian? Does the mere of a neuron imply consciousness of do you need to have several neurons working together?

If we could build a simple nematode brain from scratch would that artificial organism be conscious?

These kind of thought experiments often lead, in my experience, to a definition of "conscious" that's indistinguishable from "neuronal activity."

We have some possible bounds here on what "consciousness" means. If we're talking about "self-concept," then there's evidence of it in elephants; I'm assuming it exists in monkeys, porpoises, and whales; not sure about mice, and reasonably sure it doesn't include fruit flies.

I was thinking of consciousness as something that permits choice/action beyond an instinctual level. Perhaps fruit flies might have that, I don't really know. I would guess many folks here have a better idea than I do whether or not fruit flies are completely guided by instinct.

TBH, I think that only further confuses thing. It seems arbitrary to use "self-concept" as some sort of dividing line between consciousness and its absence. I'm not sure how you'd justify that. And by invoking "choice", which I take to mean "free will", you're opening up another can of worms that is just as messy as the first one.

"Regrettably, I'm yet to see a biological explanation not only how consciousness arose but more so why..."

How consciousness works seems a challenging question of neuroscience. I have no idea. Why, though, seems simpler. In some species, the ability to contemplate outcomes of alternative actions leads to better choices* that result in better survival or reproduction.

* "choices" used in the sense of what they feel like, because that's what our vocabulary fits, and not intended as a vote in free will argument.

It seems arbitrary to use "self-concept" as some sort of dividing line between consciousness and its absence.

Sure, it absolutely is arbitrary, just like our notion of "species" when the vast, vast majority of all life on Earth doesn't reproduce sexually and thus isn't subject to the biological species concept. Many (most?) of our categories and delineations are arbitrarily imposed on a more or less continuous natural spectrum (including the electromagnetic spectrum itself - when does a light frequency stop being red and start being orange?). The more interesting question is whether these more or less arbitrary notions help elucidate what's going on in the natural world.

So what more or less arbitrary definition of "consciousness" is most helpful to us?

Defining consciousness is difficult, as Dr. Moran pointed out. For me, organisms that can mentally envision actions and compare them without actually doing them are conscious, to a greater or lesser extent. Organisms that can think about themselves are definitely conscious.

Using that definition, many organisms are conscious. Many primates lie, which takes thinking about how the world is perceived by one's colleagues. Animals that hunt as a social group have to consider their location and behavior in relationship to the others. Crows solving puzzles and using tools have to think about things.

It should be obvious that comparing potential actions allows choosing the best one for survival and reproduction; it can be favored by natural selection. It has the down side of often slowing reactions, and leaving rooms for making mistakes. It also requires devoting more energy and other resources to a somewhat complex nervous system.

Although this kind of answer is apparently not satisfying to you, Jass, that doesn't make it any less true.

"Whether being conscious helps the survival of mankind is debatable...I personally think that having conscience is more advantageous to survival than being conscious..." [ellipses by the author] is the kind of flippant near pun that sounds better the less one thinks about it. Although I think that having a conscience and behaving well are very good things, I realize that in some situations, lack of a conscience allows one to engage in behaviors that increase one's chance of survival. Also, how could one have a conscience without being conscious? That makes no sense to me.

It’s unclear to me how biology explains qualia and subjective experience. Of course mental states are correlated with physical brain states, but no explanation is on offer for how and why, say, I experience redness — or have subjective experiences at all. This is called the Hard Problem of Consciousness and is taken fairly seriously by a number of philosopher and scientists, too.

"The existence of a 'hard problem' is controversial and has been disputed by philosophers such as Daniel Dennett[4] and cognitive neuroscientists such as Stanislas Dehaene.[5] Clinical neurologist and skeptic Steven Novella has dismissed it as 'the hard non-problem.'"

When it comes to the intersection of philosophy and science, philosophers usually don't have any answers. Sometimes they don't even have the right questions.

If you want to have a serious discussion about consciousness then answer my three questions and we can talk.

The Steve Novella article linked there is a pretty good discussion of some of the problems with the idea of a "hard problem". It also makes considerable mention of an occasional visitor here at Sandwalk:

2. Can a robot, like Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation be conscious?

I don’t know. In fact, this question goes to the heart of the problem — the explanatory gap of the Hard Problem.

Being only familiar with the Kirk-Spock version of Star Trek, I had to google up Data and discovered he was humanoid robot with a “positronic brain.” What’s a positronic brain? It’s something that Isaac Asimov dreamed up for a short story decades ago and the Stark Trek producers evidently “borrowed” it for Data. So, no, I’m pretty sure Data has no qualia because positronic brains do not exist!

But I suppose your real question is whether qualia and subjective experience are substrate independent. I don't know, but speaking for myself, no matter how one answers this question, there is an explanatory gap and that's precisely the Hard Problem in a nutshell.

Do you believe that any of our current crop of high-speed digital computers and other high-end devices experience qualia? Do they have subjective inner lives? I don’t think so, but suppose that they do. Recently a computer beat a champion Go player in China, and famously 20 years ago Deep Blue beat Kasparov at chess.

Suppose we say that the Go computer has some rudimentary consciousness of playing Go, or that Deep Blue had some inner subjective experience of playing chess. If we agree to this, then we have the explanatory gap, the Hard Problem! How can it be the case that inner workings of a computer, no matter how sophisticated, could generate, in the machine, an inner life?

But if we say these machines do not have an inner life (as I believe they do not) the answer is still unsatisfying. Why don’t they? What’s missing? This is the hard problem stated in a different way: If we knew why “intelligent” machines actually have no inner lives, then we would know why we do have such inner lives, and we could set about the task of building a machine that could actually experience qualia. The fact that we have no clue how to build such a machine is a testament to the obduracy of the explanatory gap.

John Searle, of course, has his famous Chinese Room argument that purports to show that no digital (or presumably quantum) computer could ever be conscious. If he’s right this just underscores the problem: What’s the missing spark that lights up the interior of our minds that we have, but a machine lacks even in principle? On the Searle account we could build a computer that perfectly simulates a human brain and yet it would have no interior life at all; as a simulation it would always be to the actual brain as a map is to the territory.

Notice that one doesn’t need to create a binary choice here where none exists: saying that, if naturalism is insufficient to explain the generation of consciousness, then supernaturalism must be true. There are other philosophical accounts on offer: metaphysical idealism, panpsychism, Chalmer's property (not Cartesian) dualism. None of these involve speck of supernaturalism, George Berkeley to the contrary notwithstanding.

You ask the question, “What is consciousness?” What is your answer? The answer I hear most from scientists — that it is an emergent property of lower-level physical processes in the brain — is entirely unsatisfactory, IMO. It’s not because the answer is wrong — it may well be true. It’s unsatisfactory because at the current time, it’s entirely devoid of explanatory power. Contrast this with other forms of emergentism — for example, that water with its wetness is an emergent property of underlying molecular configurations (which themselves are not wet). But we have a perfect stepwise explanation of how we go from molecules to wet water. This is precisely what is lacking in the case of underlying physical brain processes ——> qualia. That arrow is the explanatory gap.

Thank-you for answering the questions. Unfortunately, your answers invoke something called "qualia" and that's going to make it impossible to have a serious discussion.

I draw your attention to the statement on the Wikipedia site ....

"Much of the debate over their importance hinges on the definition of the term, and various philosophers emphasize or deny the existence of certain features of qualia. Consequently, the nature and existence of various definitions of qualia remain controversial in light of the fact that the existence of qualia has never been independently and scientifically proven as fact."

As far as I can tell from previous discussions about "qualia," they don't exist.

In fact the whole idea of "consciousness" is questionable from my point of view. You ask, "What’s the missing spark that lights up the interior of our minds that we have, but a machine lacks even in principle?" You are making an assumption that I do not share - what evidence do you have that such a spark actually exists?

I don't have a problem believing that an advanced machine could believe itself to be "conscious" in the same way that we do. You are the one that has a problem if you believe that fruit flies are conscious because the onus is on you to explain why the functioning of their neurons creates some sort of "spark" that distinguishes them from an advanced robot like Data in TNG.

You don't get to put the burden of proof on me, and other scientists, just because you demand an explanation for something that may not exist.

It’s not because the answer is wrong — it may well be true. It’s unsatisfactory because at the current time, it’s entirely devoid of explanatory power. Contrast this with other forms of emergentism — for example, that water with its wetness is an emergent property of underlying molecular configurations (which themselves are not wet). But we have a perfect stepwise explanation of how we go from molecules to wet water.

It's interesting you would bring that up, because it's exactly the example I was going to raise, but to support the opposite position.

I don't see how you distinguish between the emergence of "wetness" from a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen, and the emergence of "consciousness" from brain processes. It seems to me that, to the same degree, both are complete accounts that leave no gaps for some additional type of physical (or even non-physical) process that we do not as yet understand.

Can you clarify what you see as the difference between the two examples?

I’m rather surprised at your response, Larry. It seems an attempt to deflect having a serious discussion, rather than actually have one. I notice that you did not answer your own question, which you asked of me and others: “What is consciousness?” Or perhaps you did answer it when you said “qualia do not exist.”

Really? Qualia do not exist? (quoting Wikipedia isn’t very productive).

So — my visual experience of the sensation of redness does not exist? Or my being stirred by the swelling aria of brilliant opera — these things do not exist?

What are you talking about?

Of course they exist. The question is what accounts for them?

I don’t understand your comment about fruit flies. Do you believe fruit flies are not conscious? I believe all animals are conscious. Do you have evidence to the contrary? Or are you saying that humans are conscious but fruit flies are not? Do you think humans were blessed by God with consciousness but other animals were not?

I hold that all animals are conscious but that my laptop computer is not. Agree? Disagree?

You say: “I don't have a problem believing that an advanced machine could believe itself to be ‘conscious’ in the same way that we do.” What does that even mean? If a machine believes that it is conscious, then of course it IS conscious — a non-conscious entity cannot entertain beliefs!

The question goes right back to — how does the underlying physical processes of the brain/computer account for subjective experience? You give no answer. I appreciate your implicitly admitting you have no answer, because there IS no answer — at least not at the current time. That is the whole point of the Hard Problem! I understand that this explanatory gap is an uncomfortable fact for some scientists, which is why they hand wave it away.

I can give a stepwise account of how water emerges from molecules. I cannot give a comparable stepwise account of how consciousness arises from physical processes in the brain.

I'm not talking about water. I'm talking about "wetness", which is something you brought up yourself. As I see it, wetness is to water as consciousness is to brain. And neither is any more nor less problematic for our understanding of the material universe than the other. The only differences are those categorized by Chalmers as parts of the "easy problem."

Larry, of course I know that you don't believe in God. Nor do I. My response was intended to be ironical. You know this perfectly well. It’s not that you think debating with me is a waste of time. It's that you have nothing to offer on this subject, and this is your easy way out. You won't even answer your own question: "What is consciousness?" You ask the question of others, but you won't answer it yourself. Moreover you tell me that unless I answer your three questions, then you can't have a "serious discussion" with me. When I answer your three questions, lo and behold, you STILL can't have a serious discussion with me! Why? Because qualia! So you move the goalposts. I ask why you say qualia do not exist. You have no answer. If you wanted to have a serious discussion with me, then you would first defend the extraordinary claim that there are no qualia. But you don’t. Instead you cherrypick an obviously ironical statement that I made and in so doing you blockade further discussion.

You’ve answered none of my questions. You’ve defended none of your claims. You’ve engaged in no discussion at all beyond mere assertion. You’re free to do that — it’s your blog and your time — but don’t tell me that the reason we can’t have a “serious discussion” is because of me. It’s because of you. I’ve written nothing unreasonable or not well-thought out. I may be wrong. But you have not shown why I’m wrong. You choose to personally attack me rather than engage in debate.

I can't answer your question ("What is consciousness?") because I'm not sure there's really such a thing as consciousness. It could be an epiphenomenon or it could just be a sensation we have when our neurons fire to produce something we perceive as a thought.

I'm not the one who is attributing some profound meaning to consciousness so I'm not obliged to define or defend it. That onus is on you.

Your initial attempt to defend consciousness made an assumption about the existence of qualia. I've been there before. Qualia seem to be some pseudo-scientific things designed primarily to develop philosophical paradoxes that seem very profound. I used to enjoy those mind games when I was much younger but I don't have time for nonsense any more.

@lutesuite, I think your analogy is off. I think the proper analogy is, "water is to its underlying molecules, as mind is to its underlying physical brain states." My point is that we can provide a stepwise account of molecules to water, but not a comparable stepwise account of physical brain states to consciousness. As I noted earlier, I believe that it is possible to provide such an account; it is even likely to be true that there is such an account. But the account has not yet been provided. If you think there is such an account, go ahead and give it.

As I said, you yourself brought up "wetness", and I believe it is apt. The brain is also made up of molecules, so in this analogy brain = water. Consciousness, then equals wetness. Or are you suggesting that wetness does not exist?

We actually know in quite extensive detail how the brain produces consciousness. You can research that on your own. "Qualia" remains a mystery to some, but to others it's just a cool story, so that issue needs to be settled first before we task neuroscientists with explaining the origin of something we don't even know exists.

Just as a taste of how far our understanding of neuroscience has advanced, in case you missed it:

Wetness is a property of human perception. It's the sensation we feel and interpret when something like water touches our skin. If we lacked that perception, as plants probably do, then water wouldn't be wet.

There may be such things as emergent properties but that's a bad example.

Hmm. I'll have to think about that. While the "wetness" is a quality perceived by humans or other beings possessed of a nervous system, it is not purely a product of those beings' nervous systems, but requires the molecular structure of water as well. So maybe it would be best to say wetness emerges from the interaction of the two. If so, then, would there not be as strong an argument to say that the properties of water (such as wetness) do not arise from it's physical structure?

Actually, as I understand it, "wetness" is not perceived by humans. It's inferred based on temperature and pressure receptors. Of course we could now have a long discussion about what "perceived" means.

If so, then, would there not be as strong an argument to say that the properties of water (such as wetness) do not arise from it's physical structure?

I'm hoping not to overcomplicate things. A property like color arises from the interaction of our sensory system, including the portion of the brain devoted to vision, with characteristics of light, i.e., frequency(ies). Same with the feeling of wetness - interaction between our senses and physical property(ies) of the object, not either/or.

Laurence A. Moran

Larry Moran is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto. You can contact him by looking up his email address on the University of Toronto website.

Sandwalk

The Sandwalk is the path behind the home of Charles Darwin where he used to walk every day, thinking about science. You can see the path in the woods in the upper left-hand corner of this image.

Disclaimer

Some readers of this blog may be under the impression that my personal opinions represent the official position of Canada, the Province of Ontario, the City of Toronto, the University of Toronto, the Faculty of Medicine, or the Department of Biochemistry. All of these institutions, plus every single one of my colleagues, students, friends, and relatives, want you to know that I do not speak for them. You should also know that they don't speak for me.

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Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake.
Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory.
Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change.
Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance.
Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change.
Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat.
Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is TrueI once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000
It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma
One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick
There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner
An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins
Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod
The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.